The web services architecture is based on a suite of specifications that define rich Web-based functions and may be composed to meet varied service requirements. The web services architecture may be utilized in the area of system management in order to promote interoperability between management applications and managed resources. The web services architecture may be enabled to identify a core set of Web service specifications and usage requirements in order to expose a common set of operations that may be central to systems management. For example, the specifications may be enabled to discover the presence of management resources and navigate between them. The individual management resources may be created, renamed, or deleted by adjusting dynamic values. The contents of containers and collections, such as large tables and logs may be enumerated.
The Web service specifications may define minimal implementation requirements for conformant Web service implementations. An implementation of the Web service specifications may be free to extend beyond this set of operations, or choose not to support one or more areas of functionality, if that functionality is not appropriate to the target device or system.
Web services may be self-contained, self-describing, modular applications that may be published, located, and invoked across the Web. Web services definition language (WSDL) may enable service providers to describe the basic format of Web service requests over different protocols or encodings. Web services may be a collection of network endpoints or ports. In WSDL, the abstract definition of endpoints and messages may be separated from their concrete network deployment or data format bindings in order to allow the reuse of abstract definitions of messages, which are abstract descriptions of the data being exchanged, and port types, which are abstract collections of operations. The concrete protocol and data format specifications for a particular port type may constitute a reusable binding. A port may be defined by associating a network address with a reusable binding and a collection of ports may define a service.
The term “system manageability” may represent a wide range of technologies that enable remote system access and control in both OS-present and OS-absent environments. These technologies are primarily focused on minimizing on-site information technology (IT) related maintenance, maximizing system availability and performance to the local user, maximizing remote visibility and access to local systems by IT managers, and minimizing the system power consumption required to keep this connection intact.
Web services based management of computer systems has been growing in popularity. Remote management of systems using web services in out-of-band (OOB) or OS-absent environments is creating significant challenges for the OOB management devices present in the system such as network controllers and baseboard management controllers (BMCs).
Further limitations and disadvantages of conventional and traditional approaches will become apparent to one of skill in the art, through comparison of such systems with some aspects of the present invention as set forth in the remainder of the present application with reference to the drawings.